DOI: 10.7256/2454-0625.2019.1.27544

Abstract: The subject of this research is the relationship between science fiction as a literary genre and mediareality. Contemporary culture is filled with images from science fiction that are represented in media forms. New means of communication extend fantastic universums and enrich their plots through publishing fan fiction, role playing, etc. There must be some grounds the relationship between science fiction and mediareality is based on, so this is the subject matter of this research article. The research methodology is based on the techniques and methods adopted from the theory of literature, semiotics and mediaphilosophy. The researcher has also applied the historical method. The rationale of this research is caused by the fact that science fiction that had been so popular in the mid XXth century gave the content to the majority of works written in the media era. Totally and expansively growing mediareality has also involved fantastic discourse that has been at the peak of popularity for over quarter of a century. Mediareality is represented through the phenomena of contemporary fantastic discourse and the latter gets better opportunities for extension. The researcher emphasizes the need to analyze the grounds of this union in order to understand the trends of the cultural development. 

DOI: 10.7256/2454-0757.2018.9.27182

Abstract: The author examines the role of speculative fiction as a cultural genre for detecting the grounds for its demand by the modern reader. Speculative fiction attracts its reader because its produces anxiety in his consciousness; its conceptual content instigates to constantly make a choice in favor or against the concordance of the events in media reality. The foundation for irreality (and the interest of audience) becomes the phenomenon of absurdity, which in the modern oeuvres is reflected in two levels: the direct encounter with the supernatural phenomenon of the text that causes the fluctuations with regards to reality; and the more profound identification of absurdity of the events in the text with absurdity of the reality that turns attention of the subject towards the most complicated questions of existence in the society. Namely such model of structuring the narrative allows the reader, who is interested in the literature on supernatural, to acquire a new experience of absurdity, first at the stage of meeting the irreality of the text, and then in returning to the absurdity of medial culture. The scientific novelty lies in clarification of the status of absurdity in modern culture based on the examples of the speculative fiction literature. A conclusion is made that the phenomenon of absurdity, which manifests as the grounds for supernatural aspect of the plot of this genre and a part of social being of the subject of culture, attains the constituting features with regards to media reality.